


This is Where We Leave Our Marks

by AmaranthineRose



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Mage Rebellion, Relationship Study, no happy endings here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmaranthineRose/pseuds/AmaranthineRose
Summary: This is how it ends.A knife in her hand. A burning Chantry behind her. An angry, grieving Starkhaven prince near her. A city she’s fought so hard to protect thrown into chaos with no regret from the man she loved.This is how Marian Hawke realizes that he’ll die no matter what she does, and that she might have to kill him herself.Anders, Marian Hawke, and the moments where they begin and end.





	This is Where We Leave Our Marks

This is how it starts.

A pretty dark-haired girl walks into his clinic, with a dwarf and a boy with a chip on his shoulder the size of his greatsword.

He doesn’t realize until long after that he sensed the magic within her, the power that she clearly had. If his magic has always been spirited in nature, hers is as electric as the blue eyes she has. That electricity sparks something in him, and he realizes how much trouble he is in even before she explains that she wants to go into the Deep Roads.

He knows she’ll be the doom of him the second she smiles, tilts her head, and introduces herself as Marian Hawke.

Anders is right. He just won’t be right for another six years.

* * *

 

This is how she falls in love.

Marian Hawke’s priorities have always been these, in this order: her family, her dog, her sister’s safety, getting food on the table, her own safety, and then her happiness.

She has always lived for her siblings, even when Carver would have preferred her to suck an egg than keep an eye on him. But she does it because he is her brother, and she will die for him. Bethany was better than either of them, and that perhaps is why Marian and Carver fight so much that first year – they know that the best of them died in Ferelden, the only one who truly could have bettered the world.

Marian Hawke falls in love over the course of building a family she never expected. She falls in love with a man who has a history weighted down with so much blood he could swim in it. By the end of his life, it will be oceans of blood that she had a hand in.

She realizes she’s in love when he puts a hand on her shoulder in the Deep Roads, with Carver sleeping fitfully and Varric muttering more about Bianca delivered vengeance, and smiles quietly at her.

“We’re going to make it out,” he pointed out. “We’ve all survived worse.”

They do survive it. Carver only suffers for it.

* * *

 

She’s in love with him for those moments where she meets the man she’s sure Anders was once. The man who cares, who uses his magic to heal. Who cared so much about a dying friend that he let him into his soul, unaware of the drastic consequences it will have.

She’s selfish enough that she might have fallen in love with him anyway, knowing what their fates would be.

* * *

 

This is how they live.

She laughs and she loves and she fights like hell to protect the people she cares about.

She fights slavers with Fenris when they come to claim him. She takes a lightning bolt to the heart and nearly dies when Fenris’s master comes to Kirkwall to bring him back. He stands by her side even when she realizes that she has to fight templars to try and protect her family and friends.

She needles Aveline and acts as the maid of honor at the wedding, teases her about the three weeks in Orlais. She serves as someone that Aveline can count on when she doesn’t want to put her guard in too deep trouble.

She holds Merrill back from playing things beyond her control. She keeps her from killing her clan. She protects Merrill even when they have different ideas on what is safe, and whether blood magic is a right price to pay to reclaim something long thought lost.

She defends Isabela against the Arishok, fights like hell to protect her, and somehow finds a ship for her. She’s pretty sure that she could take a place in a Rivaini armada if she asked Isabela, and she nearly does several times during long nights drinking in the Hanged Man.

She helps Varric with Bartrand, and dear Maker, all she wanted was for Varric to be happy. And she will perhaps never realize just how protective Varric is of her in turn, that Varric will someday lie to a Seeker of Truth to keep Marian away from another calling of a hero.

She even tries to convince Sebastian to move and take Starkhaven back. Marian has wanted a home for so long she’ll never understand why Sebastian is so hesitant and fretful about retaking Starkhaven, but he knows she’ll be there when he does decide to take the title of Prince of Starkhaven back.

Anders is there as well. He stays by her side, protects her the best she can, and though several them never understand their relationship, there is no doubt that Hawke’s crew understands that they love each other.

They live in the Hanged Man, in Lowtown, in the nooks and crannies of Kirkwall where they fight and love and steal kisses from each other. They live in a city they have made their own, in a family they have formed for both lack of a better options and for the fact that time and fate bring them all together.

Before they end, Marian Hawke and Anders live. Together.

* * *

 

The favorite moment of his life is in her bed.

She’s asleep, half drooling on a pillow that could have fed him for a week back when he was growing up. Her damned mabari is asleep half on her leg, half on his, snoring loudly as he dreams about chasing nugs, no doubt.

Anders never loves her more than in that peace, in that happy moment where there is nothing in their lives but each other, in a place where Anders feels safe.

Two weeks later, Anders lights the spark of a war.

* * *

 

Several months before, as they run around a damned mountain to stop an ancient Darkspawn thing of evil (another typical day of Marian Hawke), Carver turns to her.

“Be careful,” he said simply, eyes flickering to where Varric and Anders are staring over the edge of an abyss, to try and figure out if they’re going in the right direction.

“Aren’t I always?” Marian asked glibly. She wipes sweat off her palms onto her pants, readjusting the grip of her staff in her hands.

“I’m serious.” Carver’s tone is solemn and low before saying, “I know Wardens who work with him. He’s… he’s dangerous, Marian. More so than we thought a few years ago. Maker’s sake, just… just watch your back.”

Marian’s tone is firm. “He won’t hurt me. He’ll never hurt me, Carver.”

Carver is right.

He will never say so to Marian, but they both know he was right.

* * *

 

This is how it ends.

A knife in her hand. A burning Chantry behind her. An angry, grieving Starkhaven prince. A city she’s fought so hard to protect thrown into chaos with no regret from the man she loved. A world she loves despite her loses that will never be the same.

This is how Marian Hawke realizes that he’ll die no matter what she does, and that she might have to kill him herself.

* * *

 

This is what goes through his head.

No regret. No fear.

Dying at her hands, perhaps, is the most merciful death he will ever get out of this.

He knows what she’ll do. As fiercely loyal as Marian Hawke is, he knows betrayal is the one thing she can’t stand. She forgave Isabela, even Tallis. But this is a different type of betrayal. People died because of this betrayal.

Maybe it’s selfish, to do all this knowing what will happen, that he will not survive to see the chaos and death that follows. Maybe it was selfish to start a war that he knows he won’t see because the woman he loves will put a knife in his body to protect the city she loves more than she admits.

He knows she’ll kill her. He knows she’ll make it quick. He knew that when he gathered through ingredients.

Anders knew that Marian Hawke would kill him for this.

It’s more than he deserves.

* * *

 She steps forward calmly.

The knife slips through robe and flesh and blood like fire through a forest.

It’s quick and as painless as she can manage in the middle of the Lowtown streets, surrounded by people he once called friends, or as close to friends as Justice could have.

Marian gives one broken sob, a hand to her mouth as she stares down at his body, realizing what exactly she’s done. What she had to do. What she did when she realized that for once, she had no other options.

She builds herself back up in moments, looks at the others, and says, “We need to stop this city from burning. We have work to do.”

In later years, she’ll wonder if there ever was an Anders.

In later years, she’ll wonder if that matters.

* * *

Marian Hawke never believes in the Maker as much as she does when her little brother slashes a shade in half from behind, a look of determination on his face, and a simple question of, “You need some help here, sister?”

He never looks more like Malcolm Hawke than in that moment.

This is where the only clue Marian gives to her broken heart comes from. She drops her staff, moves towards her brother, and hugs him tighter than ever before, even when he’d nearly drown as a child and she’d jumped in after him, even after she had been forced to let him leave with the Wardens to save his life.

No one hears the conversation they whisper.

“I killed him,” she whispers, her voice lost to the fires and screams of Kirkwall.

“I know.” He hugs her back, greatsword dropped. “I’m sorry.”

He hated Anders. They never got along. Carver would never understand how Anders failed to realize how lucky he was. He never understood how Anders could abandon the commitment and promises of a Warden, a life that Carver has thrived him.

But he knows that his sister is broken, perhaps beyond repair this time.

“I had to do it,” Marian whispers, letting go slowly. “I need to stop this. I- I need to stop this, Carver. I need to stop this, and he started it.”

And that, perhaps, was Anders’ greatest betrayal.

* * *

 

Anders and Justice both get what they wanted.

Justice got the Mage Rebellion. He found the change he wanted to see in the world. He started a war that would leave countless dead, that would serve as a backdrop to the greatest threat the world has ever seen. At the end of that war, mages would be free, or as much as they could be.

And perhaps, he got to return to the Fade where he belonged.

Anders got death, and freedom from a life who had been very little but cruel to him.

* * *

This is how Justice lives on.

By the next age, no one will remember his name. By the next age, all he will be remembered as will be Justice – and even then, in some circles, Vengeance.

But he will be remembered. He will be remembered as the conductor to the flame of the Mage Rebellion. He will be remembered as the one who set the world on fire. He will be remembered as a hero and a villain, a tyrant and a victim.

That is how Justice lives on.

* * *

 

This is how Marian lives on.

She escapes from Kirkwall with the others. Cullen lets them leave, perhaps recognizing and realizing that if Andres isn’t with her, then he’s dead – and no one would get close enough to him than her. No one would be brave enough to put a dagger between the bones of a man she loves.

No one would kill her beloved to protect a broken Kirkwall other than Marian.

She doesn’t talk to Sebastian again. They reach Ferelden, the home she left so long ago, and reach a Grey Warden stronghold that Marian heard stories of once upon a time on her father’s knee. Nathaniel Howe is waiting to smuggle them inside, and Marian dimly thanks the Maker or Elven Gods or even the damned Stone that there are still allies in the world.

She doesn’t say a thing to anyone. Not to Varric. Not to Fenris, or Isabela, or Merrill.

Especially not to Aveline, who stays in Kirkwall to try and hold back the chaos with Cullen.

And especially not to Sebastian.

He approaches her two days after they reach the safe house. Marian is standing at the window, looking out at the snowstorm around them.

“You did the right thing.” Sebastian’s brogue is calm, almost patronizingly so to Marian’s sensitive ears. “He was a monster-“

He reaches out a hand to her, and she pulls her arm away, whirling to glare at him with electric blue, danger eyes, bits of magic dancing around them.

She glares at him. “Never speak to me again. I killed him to protect Kirkwall. Not to make you happy. Not for Elthina. Never pretend I did it for you.”

Marian Hawke and Sebastian Vael never speak to each other again.

Sebastian Vael takes the throne of Starkhaven. He sends a letter to Marian Hawke offering for her to come whenever she needs.

She never responds, and never see him again.

* * *

Eventually, they separate. Merrill goes back to Kirkwall to help the remaining elves, homeless and broken and hurt from the fighting that started in Lowtown. Varric does what Varric does and tries to hold back and take care of the people he cares for. Fenris almost gleefully jumps into taking down the Tevinter slavers who hope to prey on the refugees.

Isabela offers to bring her with her on the _Siren’s Call II_. Marian still thinks it’s a dumb name.

“I thought I told you I’m a terrible sailor,” Marian laughs.

There is a hint of the old, glib Marian behind her. But her humor is fragile, softer, almost as if she is afraid of it more than anything. But it is there, something that they all hold onto as a sign of hope for her.

“You’re worse at being alone,” Isabela points out.

Marian only smiles weakly. “Maybe I won’t be.”

* * *

This is how Anders lives on.

Not Justice. Not Vengeance. This is how Anders lives on.

Anders, the healer who escaped from the Circle seven times, and for good on the last attempt. Anders, the mage who stumbled into the Grey Wardens and found a home and family for the first time that he could ever remember. Anders, the cat-loving snarker who laughed and loved and lived until his heart died when Justice came in.

Anders lives on in the little girl Marian delivers in Highever a bit over half a year after Kirkwall goes up in flames, a scream on her lips until it’s replaced with a sobbing laugh, the sound itself an embodiment of what Marian’s life has become.

Anders lives on in the odd golden-brown eyes of the little girl in her arms, her hair as dark and messy as Marian’s as she’s put in her mother’s arms, her uncle next to her with a surprisingly gentle look on his face.

Wardens rarely have children. But Marian Hawke has always defied the odds before. She has always been the exception before. Now is not that much of a surprise.

“Hello, Anika,” Marian whispers, tears in her eyes as she looks down at her. “Welcome to this crazy world. I love you.”

Marian lives.

Anders lives on in Anika Hawke.

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I come up with making quesadillas for lunch.
> 
> Depending on reception and my inspiration, this might be the first in a three-part series, the other two parts focusing on studies of a Cousland/Alistair and Trevelyan/Cullen. But we'll see. Maybe I'll just have to make more quesadillas.


End file.
